The Amber Room_ The Fate of the World's Greatest Lost Treasure - Cathy Scott-Clark [91]
What we have been sent is a photocopied scrapbook on which is written in large unsteady letters the words YANTARNY KOMNATA, the Amber Room.11
It contains pages of newspaper articles, and must have been one of those volumes seen by Vladimir Telemakov when the journalist for the car workers' daily visited Kuchumov at his Pavlovsk apartment.
We flick through wartime reports until we reach three long cuttings from Kaliningradskaya Pravda, a densely written Soviet broadsheet. The use of pictures is spartan as nothing must be allowed to interrupt the columns of minuscule dogma that run page after page like machine code. However, when we notice halfway through the first piece a smudged shot of war-torn Konigsberg and the words 'Yantarny Komnata" we decide to translate them.
Written by Vladimir Dmetriev, the first article, dated 6 July 1958, was headlined: 'The Search Continues for the Missing Amber Room'.12 Dmetriev revealed to his readers that this was the start of an exclusive three-part series in which 'for the first time all citizens of the USSR will learn the true and fascinating story of the Amber Room'. We have just read a similar phrase - in German.
Surrender of Konigsberg, April 1945
Dmetriev wrote of what had, up until then, been a state secret: the covert investigation into the fate of the Soviet Union's greatest treasure, the Amber Room of the Catherine Palace. He informed his readers that contrary to the earlier conclusions of Professor Alexander Brusov of the State Historical Museum in Moscow, the Amber Room had not been destroyed in the fall of Konigsberg and was still missing. Strauss would make exactly the same claims a year later in Freie Welt.
Reporter Dmetriev claimed that, in December 1949, he was a member of the 'top-secret mission to search for the Amber Room in Kaliningrad', an investigation ordered by ObKom (the oblast or provincial committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union) and authorized by SovNarKom in Moscow. I was really involved and excited. I had never done anything so interesting before. We reported every day to ObKom our measurements of the castle and during the evening analysed results, as if it was a difficult crossword.' We are certain that Dmetriev was referring to the same expedition as the one led by Kuchumov, to which Gerhard Strauss was called. It was supposed to be covert.
However, Dmetriev continued: 'This was vital work. Soldiers were assigned, sappers, engineers, officers, drainage experts with water pumps, generators to light up the rubble, tunnels and bunkers. I looked through fortresses and estates, wondering where the Amber Room could be hidden.' We are puzzled that Kuchumov made no mention of a valued team member called Vladimir Dmetriev and realize that our view of the 1949 mission has until now been restricted to the interrogation room in the Hotel Moscow, where Kuchumov faced down Gerhard Strauss.
The Kaliningradskaya Pravda report revealed that a crack team of specialists and Communist Party cadre were on the trail of those surviving Nazis who knew the coordinates of the Amber Room's secret location. 'Write in,' Dmetriev urged his readers. 'Write to us with all your information.' Dmetriev was particularly keen to have help in finding Helmut Will, Helmut Friesen, Gerhard Zimmerman, Ernst Gall and Friedrich Henkensiefken. Surely it was not a coincidence that these names were also on Kuchumov's list of missing Germans and that one of them, Friedrich Henkensiefken, was the Schlossoberinspektor of Konigsberg Castle referred to on the cryptic doodle sent to the great curator from Berlin.
The second article from Kaliningradskaya Pravda was published three days later, on 9 July E958. In this piece, Dmetriev revealed that the first Soviet investigation into the fate of the Amber Room, in May 1945, mounted by Professor Alexander Brusov, was a debacle. Using a series of transparent pseudonyms, Dmetriev launched a stinging attack on 'Viktor Barsov' (Alexander Brusov)